Announcer: From the
National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is All About Grants.

Megan Columbus: Welcome to another edition of All About Grants. I’m Megan Columbus with the Office of Extramural
Research, here today to talk about determining the appropriate roles for people
working on your project in your grant application. I have with me Dr. Amanda Boyce,
who’s a program director at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal
and Skin Diseases and I have Dave Curren from the Office of Extramural
Research’s Division of Grants Policy. Can we talk about how the role of a PI is
distinct from all the other roles?

Amanda Boyce: Sure. The most important thing to realize here is
that this is the person who’s going to be running the project. You have to have
the authority and the responsibility to direct that project. And it’s important
to keep in mind that the institution is actually the person who determines
whether or not you are that right person, and the way they determine that is by
allowing you to actually submit the application. The idea here is that if it’s
your scientific idea and you’re capable of intellectually and logistically
directing the project then you’re probably the appropriate person to act as the
PI.

Megan: I notice on the grant application that it’s actually called
not a PI for principal investigator, but a PD/PI. And that stands for?

Dave Curren: That would be a project director/principal investigator.
For some of our larger project grants that’s where you would have a project director
as compared to a principal investigator, but it’s really the same thing, and
they perform the same scientific oversight and management of the grant.

Megan: I know that NIH a few years back instituted a multiple-PI
policy. So when might a project warrant the use of multiple PIs?

Amanda: The ultimate goal is to create the appropriate team of
people who can do the project. And that team may consist of you, or you plus
other people. If you are putting together a project with another person where
you’re basically equally contributing to that project then it may be
appropriate to come in with a multiple-PI project. This is most common when
you’re doing something that’s interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, but
that’s not necessarily a requirement.

Megan: And NIH requires you to identify a contact PI, but the fact
that you’re a contact PI does that provide any different status?

Dave: That does not provide any different status at all. The only
reason we had to create the contact PI was so that we have a person, a single
point of contact to send emails and information to, but there is no extra
advantage, there is no extra status or responsibility just because you’re a
contact PI. All it means is that we have your email address.

Megan: I know in the scientific community people often use a term “Co-PI.”
In fact, it’s even listed on the grant application forms because it’s
recognized by some of our fellow agencies. That’s not a term that’s recognized
by NIH, however. Dave, if out there people are considering using what they
think of as a Co-PI, what they should use instead?

Dave: In most cases we recommend someone who would have a Co-PI-like
role, to either, one, be one of the multiple-PIs on the grant if that’s most
appropriate, but if it’s not or if that’s not possible, we would suggest taking
a co-investigator role, which might better describe what they’re actually going
to be doing, and what they will be responsible for as part of the project.

Amanda: So going back to talking about the difference between a
multi-PI versus a single PI with a co-investigator. I think the general idea
there is that a co-investigator is involved in the development and execution of
a portion of the project, but they just don’t quite rise to the level of being
a principal investigator. And there’s no hard or fast rules about what
percentage, or there’s no numerical value that says this person is a PI versus
a co-investigator.

Megan: Successful PIs will often establish collaborations with
other investigators who have skill sets that are complementary to those of the principal
investigator. Can one of you tell me when we would consider someone a
collaborator rather than a co-investigator for the purpose of the grant application?
What’s the distinction between those two terms?

Amanda: It’s actually pretty subtle. Both of them generally commit some
sort of measurable effort to the project. That can be compensated or otherwise.
The biggest difference is the level of involvement in the scientific thinking
of the project. So there’s basically a continuum from PI to co-investigator to
collaborator, as far as their involvement in the thinking and the logistics of
the project itself. For the most part, collaborators are associated with the
grantee institution, whereas co-investigators can come from either that institution
or another institution.

Dave: One thing they may also want to remember is that while we can
talk about this from an NIH-wide standpoint or even talk about it from the biomedical
community as a whole, many specialties or many areas of science may actually
have their own thoughts and views on how these different roles are perceived.
So in neurology, one may think of a collaborator in one way as compared to
other fields of science that may look at it somewhat differently. So you need
to make sure that when looking at these potential roles for any application
that you’re putting together, you keep in mind what the normal roles are and
expectations are in your specific field of science.

Amanda: So the roles of the collaborator and co-investigator will
be pretty clearly defined in two places. So in the application, in the Personnel
Justification, you’ll be explaining the roles of these people and they’ll also
be expected to provide letters. So if there is any difference in the scientific
communities how they use those terms, it will be pretty clearly laid out in
those two places, exactly what the roles in the project are.

Megan: And what would we expect to see in one of those letters?

Amanda: So one of the most important things in the letters is that it
matches the expectations that the principal investigator is going to put in
that Personnel Justification section, that everybody’s in agreement on the
roles of the project. Sometimes it’s simply “I’m going to support this person,”
but generally you want a really specific laid out role of that person on that
project. You want that person to have a job. You don’t want them there just
because they’re an important person in the field in order to boost the score of
the investigator portion of the review. You really need to have a role in that
project. In fact, there’s actually a third designation that you can use called
“Other Significant Contributors.” They’re similar to co-investigators, but they
actually don’t have defined effort, it’s just effort as needed. Again, if you
think about that continuum, it’s sort of, “If I need to make a phone call because
I’m having trouble with this particular experiment, this is the person I’m going
to call.”

Megan: So now if I’m trying to figure out how consultants fit in. How
does a consultant differ from a collaborator or another significant
contributor?

Amanda: I think this is actually the easiest one. Consultants are
the easiest ones to define. They basically provide advice and services for a
fee. That’s clearly laid out, again, in the letters. In the letters they actually
have their fee structure, and it’s very clear that they’re acting as consultants.

Dave: An important thing to note is, the first question you should
always have is, what is this person going to do on the project, what do I need
as far as the personnel on this application to really make sure that the
eventual project would be successful? Once you understand what that role would
be, then you can look at such items as: are they a person who’s going to be
providing professional advice and service for a fee, are they part of my own
organization, who’s going to be taking over some of the responsibility for
oversight? All of those things come into play, but only once you’ve figured out
what you need to successfully lead and manage this project to completion.

Megan: Dave, I assume all these roles are defined in the application
guide so that when you’re putting together your grant application you can use
that as a reference?

Dave: We do discuss these various roles in the SF424 R&R application
guide. They’re also discussed in the NIH Grants Policy Statement. However, it
is important to also recognize that a lot of this does depend on the actual
field of science. So we can provide a broad definition to talk about some of
the basic criteria and parameters, but ultimately, it’s really something that
needs to be defined on a project-to-project or a case-by-case basis.

Megan: For the purposes of applying for an NIH grant, do we care if
the PI distinguishes the work that will be done by a staff scientist versus a postdoc,
or a grad student versus an undergrad tech? Is this something that will be looked
at during review or time of award?

Amanda: Rather than parsing it out and looking specifically at what
I would consider the support staff role, I think it’s more important to think
about the review of the entire personnel. Review absolutely looks at that, and
their job is to make sure that you have the appropriate expertise to get the
experiments done. So they are looking basically at two things: do you have the
right amount of staff working for you and do you have the right balance of
staff working for you. By balance that’s seniority, expertise, all of those
things. One of the review criteria is investigator, and all of that will be
balanced in that investigator section. So if there is not appropriate staff on
there, your score’s probably going to suffer. If there’s too much staff or the
staff is too senior then they’re probably going to recommend budget cuts. So
you do want to make sure that you have the appropriate balance of staff in your
application.

Megan: We’ve talked about a lot of different people who make up the
scientific team. Which of those people would be included on the senior/key
personnel part of the application, and what does that mean practically on the application
itself and philosophically?

Amanda: So importantly, your key personnel are the people who are
going to be submitting their biosketches with the application, and their names
are actually going to be listed on the front page of the application when the
reviewers are looking at it, or when someone like me, a program officer, sees
it. This is in contrast with the Personnel Justification page in the application
where pretty much anyone you’ve listed is going to have a role, whether they’re
named or not. So you might say that there’s a postdoc that’s going to be on
this application, but you don’t have to necessarily name the postdoc. But your senior
and key personnel will always be named individuals, and that’s why there’s
always going to be a biosketch associated with them.

Megan: This has been very helpful. Any last piece of advice for our
listeners?

Amanda: The one thing I can say is that if you put in your application,
and you’ve labeled somebody as a co-investigator and you’re panicking that maybe
they should have been a collaborator instead, this is not something that’s
going to be a major concern to the reviewers in the study section or to the program
officers once that application is reviewed. It’s very subtle differences, and
really if you have the balance of expertise and the right amount of people on
your application, that’s the most important thing that the reviewers are
looking at.

Dave: I would agree with that completely. The one thing you want to
do above all others when you’re putting together an application is to put your
best foot forward and make the most enticing argument that you are the best
person suited for this role, and that all the scientific personnel are the appropriate
people for the project and that they can lead this project to become very
successful at the end of the day.